Monday, August 24, 2015

Langton by Spilsby, Lincolnshire

What shape is a house?

I checked the Pevsner Buildings of England volume on Lincolnshire before setting out to find the severe classical church of Langton by Spilsby, all red brick and box pews, but I didn’t notice the book’s two lines on this nearby cottage: ‘E of the church an eminently picturesque cottage orné,* circular, with a conical, thatched, overhanging roof.’ Fortunately this eye-catching product of the Picturesque movement was the first thing I did notice when I pulled up by the church.

Pevsner gets it right, more or less. He might have mentioned the mud and stud construction, the Gothic pointed windows, the elaborate pattern of the glazing bars (a mix of elongated octagons and lozenges), and the fact that the roof overhang is supported by slender columns, but we get the idea. There’s an odd thing though. Would you call this cottage circular? Its footprint seems to me octagonal, with fairly crisp corners to the wall and a column at each corner. The thatched roof smooths out the shape, as thatched roofs do, but still has more or less obvious facets. By the time your eye reaches the top of the roof, you’re gazing at an elliptical chimney pot. So: Circular? Octagonal? Metamorphic, perhaps.

There have been at least three big houses at Langton – an old hall, a rebuild of 1822 that didn’t work out because of bad foundations and was demolished, and a third, a Victorian hall, that has also been pulled down. This small but striking cottage, perhaps built in the early-19th century to please the owner of the estate and house servants or farm workers, has outlived them all, a survivor in a quiet lane by the church and the ubiquitous Lincolnshire farms.

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* Cottage orné Rustic house of picturesque design, as the English Heritage definition has it. Cottages ornés were built in the 18th and 19th centuries and have features such as polygonal plans, thatched roofs, pointed or quatrefoil windows, and ornate or rustic woodwork.

IRREPLACEABLE: A HISTORY OF ENGLAND IN 100 PLACES

Published as part of Historic England’s Irreplaceable: The History of England in 100 Places campaign, supported by the insurance company Ecclesiastical, this book celebrates one hundred of England’s remarkable places. The places, nominated by the public under the guidance of a panel of expert judges, range from the observatory in Greenwich where modern measurement of time began to an ancient inn carved into the sandstone in Nottingham, from Windsor Castle to a post-war prefab in Birmingham. The choices are surprising, intriguing, and enlightening – and all deserve to be celebrated.

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About Me

I'm the author of The English Buildings Book, Phantom Architecture, Restoration, the book of Adam Hart-Davis's series What the Romans Did For Us, other books about architecture and buildings, and various books on other subjects, including Dorling Kindersley's handbooks on Mythology (written with Neil Philip) and Religions. IN THIS BLOG I share my encounters with some of my favourite English buildings, including many that are little known and that get short shrift in the architectural history books. Look here for accounts of breweries, prefabs, power stations, corrugated-iron barns and the occasional parish church as I share my meetings with England's remarkable buildings. IN THIS COLUMN, JUST BELOW HERE, are links to more information about me, my books, and the courses and talks I give. A LITTLE FURTHER DOWN are some links to a series of short articles that make up a very brief history of English architecture.

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ABOUT ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE

Phantom Architecture

Phantom Architecture looks at some of the great buildings of the world that did not make it past the architect's drawing board. A skyscraper one mile high, a dome covering most of downtown Manhattan, a triumphal arch in the form of an elephant: some of the most exciting buildings in the history of architecture are the ones that never got built. These are the projects in which architects took materials to the limits, explored challenging new ideas, defied conventions, and pointed the way towards the future. Some of them are architectural masterpieces, some simply delightful flights of fancy. It was not usually poor design that stymied them – politics, inadequate funding, or a client who chose a ‘safe’ option rather than a daring vision were all things that could stop a project leaving the drawing board. These unbuilt buildings range from Boullée's vast spherical monument to Isaac Newton to Archigram's Walking City. Phantom Architecture shows why they still haunt us today.

The English Buildings Book

Published by English Heritage, The English Buildings Book, by Philip Wilkinson and Peter Ashley, covers everything from parish churches to castles, town halls to market halls, barns to bars. Now out in paperback.